How to Write a Family History

Marilyn Nelson is a storytelling poet who has taught poetry and contemplative practice to college students and West Point cadets. She brings a contemplative eye to ordinary goodness in the present and to complicated ancestries we’re all reckoning with now. And she imparts a spacious perspective on what “communal pondering” might mean.

Marilyn Nelson is a professor emerita of English at the University of Connecticut and a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She is the recipient of the 2012 Poetry Society of America’s Frost Medal for “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry,” and the 2019 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her books include The Fields of Praise and The Meeting House. Her upcoming children’s picture book about social justice and the power of introverts is called Lubaya’s Quiet Roar.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode "Marilyn Nelson — Communal Pondering in a Noisy World." Find more at onbeing.org.

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